In the midst of Montana’s housing crisis, where home prices have surged by 66% in just the last four years alone, residents of the state’s most affordable housing option — mobile home parks — are fighting their own battle to level the playing field between them and the massive investment firms buying out small park owners across the state.
The rising cost of housing in Montana has been significantly outpacing thenational increase of 50% since 2020, and as the 2025 legislative session approaches, residents are hoping lawmakers will add protections to keep them from being economically forced from their homes.
In her 2023 handout to the Senate Business, Labor and Affairs Committee, Highwoods resident and longtime advocate for manufactured and mobile homeowners Cindy Newman details the changes in lot rent increases at the seven parks that have been gobbled up by large investment firms, pointing out her own lot rent in Billings increased a total of $117, or 3-4% each year, in the 20 years prior to the takeover. Within three years of Havenpark purchasing the park, the lot rent increased by $391, or 138% for new residents.
Utah-based Havenpark Communities operates manufactured homes across the country and aims to grow, according to its website.
Vivian Rambo, a resident of Countryside, in Great Falls, has a similar experience.
“Lot rent was $150 when I moved in,” says Rambo, who moved into the park in 1995. “Now with the added utilities, it’s $550 per month, but new people coming in are $700 or better.”
Countryside was purchased by Havenpark approximately four years ago, and now lists its current lot rent in the range of $475-$775. The firm currently owns seven mobile home parks in Montana, spread between Kalispell, Great Falls and Billings, totaling more than 1,800 lots with a controversial 276 lot expansion planned for Golden Meadows in the Billings West End.
Along with the drastic increase in lot rents, residents are hit with separate fees for utilities once included in the lot rent. And if residents want to move, they say, they have few options.
“To move your trailer is $15K to $20K, and there’s no place to move it to, so then you’re stuck,” Rambo said in an interview with the Daily Montanan. “Once you get in there and the rent keeps going up, then you get kind of locked into it. You can’t sell it, you can’t leave unless you just walk away from your house and let them have it, which I know has happened in a couple of cases.”
Keeping residents trapped in immovable trailers paying an ever-increasing lot rent isn’t an unfortunate side effect of the business, but rather it’s most important feature, as expressed by Mobile Home University co-founder Frank Rolfe, who famously told Bloomberg the business model is one similar to running “A waffle house where everyone is chained to the booths.”
The sentiment is echoed in Havenpark’s original, 2016 website copy when they lauded the inability of residents to move their trailers as a primary selling point: “Tenant turnover is also minimal since it is difficult and very expensive ($6,000 — $8,000+) for tenants to move their homes. As a result, operating cash flow is among the highest of any real estate class.”
Havenpark has even been accused of making sure residents cannot move their trailers. In a 2022 lawsuit, residents of Meadowlark Park in Billings sued Havenpark over unsafe water conditions and unlawfully cutting off the hitches on residents’ mobile homes, preventing them from being moved.
A response from Havenpark
Havenpark was contacted for this story. A spokesperson for the company responded with this statement to the questions posed by the Daily Montanan:
“Havenpark is proud to offer quality, affordable homes in great communities throughout beautiful Montana. Each year, we make substantial investments to improve and upgrade all of our Montana properties, including updates to infrastructure, roads, landscaping, community spaces, and other amenities that make our communities even more enjoyable for current and future residents.
“At some of our communities, years of deferred maintenance by prior owners have impacted the condition of basic infrastructure on the property. We work as quickly as possible to make repairs when needed and are making progress to update aging infrastructure.
“We aim to create enduring value for our residents. Across Montana, Havenpark has invested two times more money back into our communities than we’ve received through rent increases. Though housing costs are increasing dramatically throughout the state – having roughly doubled in Montana since 2020 – we have increased rents for our residents at a much lower rate. Those rent increases have allowed us to invest in improving the communities, making them significantly better places for our residents to live. The improvements also increase the resale value of our residents’ homes, resulting in a direct financial benefit to them.
“In Montana, and every state where we operate, we welcome feedback at all times and have never forced a resident to leave for raising their concerns. Retaliation is against our principles and often against the law.”
In addition to the rising lot rents and inability to move is the lack of maintenance completed by the park, which Newman refers to as an “ongoing environmental and public safety issue.”
“Maintenance is terrible,” echoes Rambo. “You can go and tell them what your problem is, but they don’t listen. They just give you a, ‘Yes ma’am,’ and you go back to waiting.”
Legal Protections? Not in Montana
If residents raise concerns, they stand the risk of facing direct retaliation, they told the Daily Montanan.
“Older people are scared to death of that,” said Rambo, speaking to the park’s behavior toward residents calling attention to specific issues. “They would sue you or they would evict you, such things as that.”
Efforts to pass stronger protections have repeatedly failed in the state legislature or met the governor’s veto pen.
Sen. Brian Hoven, R-Great Falls, introduced Senate Bills 362, 268 and 269 during the 2021 legislative session.
Senate Bill 362 aimed to create an appeal process for residents facing rent increases exceeding 3% in a single month, along with resources meant to safeguard homeowners from retaliatory actions by landlords. Senate Bill 268 would have allowed residents to petition local authorities to condemn their park if rents rose “significantly above the consumer price index,” and allowed homeowners within the park to create a Resident-Owned Community (ROC) and purchase the park from the city or county. Both measures failed to pass through their respective committees.
Senate Bill 269 did pass and was signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, but was greatly amended from its original form, which would have required parks to give residents 90 days notice of the park’s sale in order to give them time to organize a purchase among themselves. The form of the bill signed by Gianforte mentioned nothing related to 90 days notice, instead offering an incentive to park owners to sell their park to residents by exempting the sale from capital gains tax.
In the 2023 legislative session, residents were hopeful as House Bill 889 passed through both chambers of the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill would have made changes such as requiring park owners to give residents a 60-day notice of a rent increase rather than a 30-day notice, and giving residents the option of a full year lease, rather than renting month to month.
The bill was immediately vetoed by Gianforte.
“I’ll be the first one to say that bill would not have solved every problem facing mobile home owners,” said Rep. Jonathan Karlan, D-Missoula, who sponsored the bill. “But I would say right now the park owners have an enormous amount of power over these residents, and that bill would have given the residents a little more time and recourse to make decisions.”
Karlan goes on to explain the problem isn’t only Havenpark.
“I have constituents dealing with predatory and unfair practices that don’t live in a Havenpark property, and we need to make strong laws that protect Montanans from unfair practices, period, whether it’s coming from private equity or an individual,” he said.
Learning from Other States
Faced with growing frustration and limited options, Newman and other advocates are looking to successful programs in other states for inspiration. Colorado’s Mobile Home Park Oversight Program, for instance, provides a model for how Montana could address the crisis.
Colorado’s program, overseen by the Division of Housing, manages the Mobile Home Park Act and provides a Dispute Resolution and Enforcement Program. It oversees several key functions related to mobile home parks, including conducting outreach and education on relevant laws, and receiving and investigating all complaints. It also facilitates dispute resolution between mobile home owners and landlords, determines legal violations, enforces compliance, and engages in public rule-making to clarify regulations, allowing mobile home owners, park owners and managers to submit complaints for resolution without resorting to expensive court proceedings.
“The problems that arise when private equity investors are your landlord can be very costly to take to court,” said Newman. “That’s a David-versus-Goliath situation that residents can neither win nor afford.”
To fund the program, advocates propose a modest fee split between park owners and residents, similar to that in Colorado, where they settled on $50 per year per lot, split between the landlord and the resident.
As Montana prepares for its 2025 legislative session, residents remain hopeful that Montana’s leaders will finally listen to their pleas.
“I do like living in my house,” said Rambo. “I just don’t like the way that the corporation runs it, because they’re just out for their own good, filling their own pockets and they don’t give a hoot about the residents. There’s so many older folks in there who are on a fixed income. I don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep doing the rent if it keeps going up. Fortunately I’m still working, but I’m 76 and how long am I going to be able to work?”
Newman shares the same sentiment.
“People are suffering and we are looking for a fair and just solution,” she said. “And we’re running out of time.”
Editor's note: This article has been updated with new information about lot rent increases
Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com.
